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Health Reform: Public option mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the Senate?

Will a government-run health option make it back into the Baucus health reform bill?
A riveting debate is underway in the Senate Finance Committee, where Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV are making the case for its addition to the Senate health bill, in twin amendments.
Rockefeller quoted a Congressional Budget Office analysis that adding a public option to the insurance exchange proposed would save $50 billion over 10 years.
“I think that makes the point,” Rockefeller said.
Insisting that adding a public option would simply add competition, not move the country down a slippery slope toward a single-payer system, he again drew from the CBO report.
The analysis suggested that by 2015, 8 million people would enroll in the public plan – about one-third of those participating in the health exchange, and that would fall to 6.125 million a few years later.
Rockefeller’s amendment would put the public plan’s reimbursement rate at Medicare rates for the first two years, to get it started. Then, the plan administrator would negotiate rates with providers.
In supporting a public plan, Schumer held up a map of the United States that showed how little competition exists among health insurance companies in most states. Their job is to provide value for their shareholders, he said, and they do it by establishing near monopolies in the private market.
“Without competition the prices keep going up,” Schumer said. “Those of us who support a public option support providing some real competition for the coagulated, ossified and fundamentally anti-competitive private insurance companies.
Sen John Ensign, R-Nevada, said he’s convinced a public option will lead to a Canada-style single-payer plan.
“It eventually could destroy the private insurance market, which is why a lot of us believe we will wind up with a single-payer health system,” Ensign said.
Committee Chair Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said he hoped to vote on the two public option amendments by lunch time. It didn’t happen, and another Senator retorted it might be suppertime.
You can watch the hearing at CSPAN